The Quizbowl Resource Center

Jamnman23

1. Not having actually looked at the set, it sure seemed like there was an overabundance of basketball. And as such, an overabundance of "this 6-foot-11 forward" or the like as a clue. This is a space-waster worse than "Born on/in", unless you're writing about Jon Rauch or Eddie...

Jamnman23

Two sites have already played this year's Penn Bowl Trash, so I thought I would open this forum to those who have already played the set and those who do not plan on playing the set at any of the other mirror sites. I thought I would just make one general discussion thread, but if there are requests...

Jamnman23

I do not plan on having lames at Penn Bowl Trash, and I will not pretend that me potentially not wanting to write extra bonuses was not at least a part of that decision. They promote not having a well-rounded knowledge base. However, I think this line by Nalin really sums up my opinion on lames from...

Jamnman23

From looking at this discussion, it seems that a lot of the difficulty in pinning down an optimal trash distribution is deciding what to do with TV/movies because of the natural overlap of the two categories. I think the idea of using the common link/interdisciplinary section within the "other&...

Jamnman23

I am not planning on playing this tournament, but I have a suggestion for packet requirements. For the subdistribution, it would probably be good to specify a time distribution. With the way the requirements are currently written, you could receive a submitted packet that is 4/4 movies all pre-1980 ...

Jamnman23

Depending on if I was able to attend or not, I could probably write for this in the future. I am fine writing most things about the four major areas of the trash distribution.

Jamnman23

One thing I thought that this tournament could have done better on was writing tossups on individual songs. This was something that I noticed throughout the tournament as well. In general, I was really pleased with the answer selections, but I don't think that many of the early and middle clues on ...

Jamnman23

I echo Chris on this. This is definitely not something that one person can produce over and over again over a bunch of years, and I think rotating editors and writers could be a possible solution. As people have become more disillusioned with TRASH over the years, there has certainly been a void tha...

Jamnman23

Although these questions are not necessarily all areas of strength for me, I thought they were mostly pretty good. I am not a great judge of hockey tossup difficulty, but I thought that the Ryan Miller tossup was well done. The hockey bonuses did skew a little hard. For example, despite the greatnes...

Jamnman23

I totally blew goats on that last 100. :shakes fist: Nah, in all seriousness that room was a rollicking good time. Enjoyed the hell out of this. I second this. I was feeling pretty good after the first 200 and knew very few questions after that. However, this was extremely chill and really enjoyabl...

Jamnman23

CSQuizJags wrote:Other than that, I cannot determine the others based on their emails.

One of the unnamed teams is from Penn.

Jamnman23

KHAAAAN please wrote:Tossup on MASH

I have to admit, this was kinda embarrassing to get, even in the context of the girly stuff packet.

Jamnman23

I first want to say that I really did enjoy playing this tournament, unique format and all. Except for the Military History round, I played trash the whole day and was very entertained by the questions. That said, I'd like to point out some of the problems I witnessed in pyramidality and answer choi...

Jamnman23

I am interested in coming to this. I don't know whether I will have to be a free agent or if I can get some kind of team together.

Jamnman23

It seemed like a ton of 1970's detective shows came up, but perhaps I am misremembering. I don't think that's inaccurate. However, when I was trying to write older TV questions that weren't sitcoms or was trying to write about older one-hour dramas, a high proportion of those tend to be cop/detecti...

Jamnman23

I had some issues with this tournament. Among them were genre balance within TV distro Is there any way you could be more specific about this? I'd like to know what way my TV questions tend to skew. What would be pretty reasonable, I think, is ANSWER: Super Bowl XL [or the Super Bowl following the ...

Jamnman23

for an event that was to be "a regular difficulty trash tournament that should be accessible to casual players, but at the same time fun and entertaining for the more hard-core members of the trash community" there was a lot more "old school" material than new, at least from wha...

Jamnman23

Also, Anson was NOT the first to reach 3000 hits, in that initial totalings of his career hits total neither factored in NA play and left him about 80 hits short of 3000. Yeah, I didn't realize when I first discovered that fact that is was so controversial and contentious. If I had, I would certain...

Jamnman23

The only advice I would have for next year's packets is that some of the bonuses were really easy, there wasn't really a hard part on a good few of them. If people can cite some specific examples of this, that would be really helpful. Also, if there were any answer lines that people either enjoyed ...

Jamnman23

Now that all the mirrors for Penn Bowl Trash have finished up, I am now opening the set up for discussion. I want to thank everybody who came out to play and staff at the different sites, and hopefully, all you guys enjoyed the set.

Jamnman23

I don't mean to pre-empt the forthcoming logistical information, but I am assuming that most people are expected to fly in through the Atlanta airport. Isn't Atlanta around an hour and a half away from Athens? This seems like a nightmare for anyone flying in or out on Friday and Sunday, which I am g...

Jamnman23

The distribution for this tournament looks great, and Penn is highly interested in sending a team to this. We still need to figure out if we can find a driver, but it looks like there is a pretty good chance we'll be able to come. Tossups should be 6-7 lines in length in 12-point Times New Roman fon...

Jamnman23

Also, in terms of logistics, registration will probably begin around 9 AM.

Jamnman23

So far for teams, I have: RIT NYU VCU Maryland (Possibly X2) Penn House team(s) This is not finalized. There are still one or two teams that have not given me definitive answers yet. Once again, if you would like to play and have not contacted me yet to let me know, please post in the thread or send...

Jamnman23

Hey, I have not gotten that much of a response yet from those planning to attend this tournament. This is what I have so far. Teams: Maryland NYU Nate Kane and team Possible Penn House Team Free Agents: Delano Barnes Gene Stoye Please contact me if I missed anybody or if you intend to play this tour...

Jamnman23

I think Penn would be up for sending a team for a potential tournament in March. However, I don't know the exact date you are planning it for. It could potentially fall in our spring break, in which case we probably could not get a team together. In terms of other tournaments, does anyone know if GA...

Jamnman23

The time has come for Penn Bowl Trash II. Penn will be hosting its second annual house-written trash tournament on Sunday January 31, 2010. This is the day after Penn Bowl will be held. This tournament will be a regular difficulty trash tournament that should be accessible to casual players, but at ...

Jamnman23

I do have some criticisms of this tournament, but I would not say it was out of the realm of enjoyment for me. However, I would say that it was not as good as last year's edition. Specifically, although I enjoyed many of the music tossups, I do agree that a lot of the music questions, especially tho...

Jamnman23

Field update: Charter (probably 2 teams) Delaware House (probably 2 teams) "Gene Stoye" Penn (said 1-2 teams, Rob would like confirmation) Temple (2 teams) I'll talk to Ben and will have a definite answer for Rob (via e-mail) by Thursday night. We'll definitely have 1 team though. Hey, so...

Jamnman23

Hey, is anyone planning on posting the stats for this site?

Jamnman23

Having played a Southeastern Mirror of Penn Bowl a couple months ago, I think the general consensus was that the tournament was written well, but obviously by new players. I still find it weird that a 4-month old tournament discussed on the boards was used. I was one of the rookie question writers ...

Jamnman23

For the moment, you can definitely pencil in a team from Penn. I have gotten word that in addition to myself, Joe Nguyen and Chris White intend to play this; so we will at least have a three-person team, possibly looking for a fourth if any interested free agents are out there. If you know comics an...

Jamnman23

Speaking of which, if any teams need a young-ish trash player who specializes in videogames, comic books and sci-fi novels, I'm looking for a team! Right now, those are certainly the need areas of the Penn trash team. We are certainly trying for TRASHionals next year and returning all members from ...

Jamnman23

I miss the Saturday night theme rounds. It seems to me that years ago there was 8-10. This year there was 3. I certainly enjoyed the theme rounds after a long day of moderating. I would have certainly liked to see a greater volume and variety, but I am not sure how possible that would have been. Fr...

Jamnman23

I am very interested in playing this tournament, but I am from the northeast, so this would be a longish and expensive trip for me. I was wondering if you were willing to have this tournament mirrored, and in turn, if anyone in the northeast or mid-atlantic region would possibly want to mirror this ...

Jamnman23

I don't know if what sports questions get answered at academic tournaments is a good representation of what gets answered at trash tournaments, but it seems like a lot more of the soccer questions are getting converted than the other non-"big three" sports, and most of the rest of them be...

Jamnman23

I did write for Penn Bowl Trash. I probably wrote about 15% of the tournament, and my focus was definitely on picking accessible topics that would be fun to answer. I definitely think in that regard that the tournament was a success. Of course, a lot of questions had questionable clue order, but I ...

Jamnman23

I was certainly a fan of both the Louisville question and the Branch Rickey one as well. I think they are proof that it is possible to write good sports questions. The Branch Rickey one in particular is note-worthy, because biographical sports questions are often the most mundane and one-dimensional...

Jamnman23

I'm still not seeing why a 4/4 sports distribution gets the free pass it gets. Yes, sports are popular with quizbowl players and college students in general. So what. Knock it down to 3/3 or fewer. I echo Mike Bentley that they're dull to write and they're dull to play. But why continue to struggle...

Jamnman23

For what it's worth: I dunno if you wrote for the Penn trash tournament this year, but I thought it did a very good job of selecting reasonable topics. Even though there was too much hockey, it mostly focused on really answerable hockey that someone like me (who watches Sportscenter but otherwise h...

Jamnman23

A lot of problems with trash (especially TRASH) can be resolved by asking these simple two questions: 1) Is this something that people like? 2) Is this something that people know the name of? I agree that these are the two most important factors in deciding the composition of a trash tournament. Yo...

Jamnman23

Don't worry, Ben, we'll write an all Sitcoms Set some day and then there will be Nina Van Horn AND Kevin Liotta tossups for all! That sounds like a great idea, but I can't help thinking that I would be way over my head in some competition like that. Sure, I would smile and get a kick out of every o...

Jamnman23

I definitely think that the most recent albums of prominent artists should be considered as possible toss-ups. Recentness can compensate for relatively mediocre popularity, success, or importance. This is not just true of music, but can be seen in other categories as well. For example, in the next m...

Jamnman23

Absolutely, regarding characters--I picked two characters (Jack from 30 Rock and Jim from The Office) that I think would be fair game at a reasonable level difficulty tournament. What I generally meant by the example is that if you tossup characters, it should generally be on one of the most import...

Jamnman23

Tim To be clear, my objection is to tossups of the form "Guest artist X plays the xylophone on Track 2 of this album. Two songs mention laundromats in the lyrics, and the CD version has a bonus instrumental track entitled Granola. Also including songs such as Generic Title and Whateveria, for ...

Jamnman23

all that Internet/food/scifi-lit crap that no one likes anyway Not true, I like that crap. (Well, some of it at least. Internet and board/card games are two of my favorite topics.) The real problem with questions on "other trash" is that "other trash" is ill-defined, and without...

Jamnman23

Yeah, I was getting at some sort of "casual" versus "serious" knowledge debate. By no means was I suggesting that three years old was a good cutoff for this. I just used 1992 as an example because Matt alluded to something like that. Additionally, I was not suggesting that Matt w...

Jamnman23

I certainly agree with many of the points that Matt has made. In terms of the imperfect ratios between different categories, I think that is a product of me combining my own idea of optimal distribution with what I know others would like to see. Certainly, I would be more happy if a tournament just ...

Jamnman23

There has been much talk recently, especially in previous posts, about the optimal trash/TRASH distribution. I realize that as a relatively new trash player and as someone with no pull within the TRASH organization, I don't expect to change or be able to fix what I believe to be the deficiencies in ...

Jamnman23

Of course we wouldn't use the trash packets in any official capacity. We just would like access to more material so that we can occasionally read a trash packet during practice and not always be scrambling to find a quality set that we haven't already read. I guess if all else fails, we'll see if bu...

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